The match making for ranked play works fine, unless you are in the top 0.1% of players and play on the NA servers.

What are you basing this statement on?

The MM favors new players and players with low battle counts, as does their MMR system. If you're established and on an old account, the amount of games it takes to move up ranks is absurd compared to a new reroll. I have a smurf account that was easily placed at rank 5 while my main account, which I play with exactly the same level of skill, has recently dropped from rank 11 to 24. The MM moves people up too quickly and improving, but established people up far too slowly. It also doesn't account well for experience. The MMR is similarly problemmatic.

That's the same in any MMR system though - there's a reason smurfing exists in the first place.

In terms of match matching though, in ranked play unless you are the very cream of the crop you will generally be matched with people at your skill level. the only people who suffer are the really high end players on NA, because for some stupid reason NA pros wont plkay hero league because they gtebad games, so when they do play hero league they get bad games etc etc.

That's the same in any MMR system though - there's a reason smurfing exists in the first place.

In terms of match matching though, in ranked play unless you are the very cream of the crop you will generally be matched with people at your skill level. the only people who suffer are the really high end players on NA, because for some stupid reason NA pros wont plkay hero league because they gtebad games, so when they do play hero league they get bad games etc etc.

Not really. HOTS is more of a team game than either LOL or DOTA. With items and individual levels, it's FAR easier to carry a game. In HOTS, games are often decided at draft, by which team has the worst player, or by the team with the poorest communication. The ranked ladder in LOL and DOTA is also far better in that people get demoted once players achieve a higher rank. In this preseason, ranks are entirely meaningless. If you're not at rank 1, you're stuck with whatever the MM throws you. Often the disparity is HUGE, particularly at ranks 30-10. I played at rank 10 for quite some time and saw a large disparity in ability and game understanding. Blizzard knows this and Browder even comments on these issues often.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

Someone please explain to me why the fuck people go for bosses at the worst possible time so frequently. The bosses are like idiot magnets or something.

It's not just idiots, I've seen a fair share of professional games that have swung based on a boss pit throw. The whole idea of camps and mercs and bosses seems hard to really optimize. In something like LoL or Dota, the bosses (Baron / Dragon / Roshan) are arguably the most strategically important objectives in the game aside from the core itself and the entire late game revolves around getting the buffs. Basically, the general strategy looks like "Is Baron / Roshan up, if yes, fight around the pit and if one team gets a decisive victory with enough HP left to tank it then take the boss and use that to open up an advantage, if no, farm". In HotS it's a lot more ambiguous. The boss provides a lot less advantage and is typically higher risk (with huge AoE stuns and roots) and there are other objectives which are more important. People know that bosses (and merc camps and stuff) provide an advantage but exactly when to cap them is a lot harder to decide because the game doesn't revolve around them the way it does in LoL or Dota. At least, that's how it looks to me.

That's the same in any MMR system though - there's a reason smurfing exists in the first place.

In terms of match matching though, in ranked play unless you are the very cream of the crop you will generally be matched with people at your skill level. the only people who suffer are the really high end players on NA, because for some stupid reason NA pros wont plkay hero league because they gtebad games, so when they do play hero league they get bad games etc etc.

Not really. HOTS is more of a team game than either LOL or DOTA. With items and individual levels, it's FAR easier to carry a game. In HOTS, games are often decided at draft, by which team has the worst player, or by the team with the poorest communication. The ranked ladder in LOL and DOTA is also far better in that people get demoted once players achieve a higher rank. In this preseason, ranks are entirely meaningless. If you're not at rank 1, you're stuck with whatever the MM throws you. Often the disparity is HUGE, particularly at ranks 30-10. I played at rank 10 for quite some time and saw a large disparity in ability and game understanding. Blizzard knows this and Browder even comments on these issues often.

There are two problems with HotS matchmaking.

1) Your rank is cosmetic, it has little to do with how good are and nothing to do with how the system matches you. Blizzard wanted to adopt Hearthstone's ladder system aesthetically but didn't want to use it to actually matchmake games. So it's a clusterfuck.

2) They either won't or don't have the players to be able to match people in the same MMR bracket with each other. Instead they create teams with similar average MMR. Which is also a clusterfuck given how team-orientated the game is.

"You finally did it, you magnificent bastards. You went so nerd that even I don't know WTF you're talking about anymore. I salute you." - WindupAtheist

I've been playing this a lot, and I'm currently at rank 22, so I'm an average player. The matchmaking is great at my level -- I have almost all close games with very few players who seems vastly better or worse than me. I think the complaints about matchmaking must be coming from either very new or very highly skilled players.

That's the same in any MMR system though - there's a reason smurfing exists in the first place.

In terms of match matching though, in ranked play unless you are the very cream of the crop you will generally be matched with people at your skill level. the only people who suffer are the really high end players on NA, because for some stupid reason NA pros wont plkay hero league because they gtebad games, so when they do play hero league they get bad games etc etc.

Not really. HOTS is more of a team game than either LOL or DOTA. With items and individual levels, it's FAR easier to carry a game. In HOTS, games are often decided at draft, by which team has the worst player, or by the team with the poorest communication. The ranked ladder in LOL and DOTA is also far better in that people get demoted once players achieve a higher rank. In this preseason, ranks are entirely meaningless. If you're not at rank 1, you're stuck with whatever the MM throws you. Often the disparity is HUGE, particularly at ranks 30-10. I played at rank 10 for quite some time and saw a large disparity in ability and game understanding. Blizzard knows this and Browder even comments on these issues often.

There are two problems with HotS matchmaking.

1) Your rank is cosmetic, it has little to do with how good are and nothing to do with how the system matches you. Blizzard wanted to adopt Hearthstone's ladder system aesthetically but didn't want to use it to actually matchmake games. So it's a clusterfuck.

2) They either won't or don't have the players to be able to match people in the same MMR bracket with each other. Instead they create teams with similar average MMR. Which is also a clusterfuck given how team-orientated the game is.

This isn't how matchmaking has worked for a couple of months now.

Rank is now much, much more aligned to MMR. I haven't had a hero league game where someone has been more than 4 ranks way from me since the new matchmaking system going live. Generally everyone is 2 ranks either side of me.

For your second point, see above - they changed how the system makes teams, so it no longer matches potatoes with leet players to create a balanced MMR team. The gap between the highest and lowest skill player is much, much smaller now.

Realistically, the only issue in ranked play right now is at rank 1, ion the NA servers. Not enough of the high level players play, so it can't create enough decent games. In Korea and EU they don't have this issue because the top-end players play hero league every day as part ofd theitr training, but for some reaosn NA doesn't.

Also, worth noting that ranks are going at some point this year when we leave pre-season .It's being replaced with a league system (thank god).

All the heroes are unlocked/free to play this weekend, so if you've been wanting to try something out, now's the time.

On that note, every dumbass in the world is playing something like abathur for the first time, so play at your own risk.

Yeah, also note that there's a "recruit a friend" program going on where players can earn a free unique mount for bringing newbies in. So if you're one of, like, two people on this forum who might play this for the first time, you might want to grab an invite from a vet so you can both get free stuff (I think the rewards for newbies are two free characters and gold/xp boosters).

Also, this is a 50% bonus XP week, so it's a good time to grind to level 5 to get that 500g reward.

So what's the best way to get back into this? I've come back after doing all the Naxx stuff except heroic, and I have those cards. How do I build decks now given that I don't have all the other expansion stuff people seem to have?

That's the same in any MMR system though - there's a reason smurfing exists in the first place.

In terms of match matching though, in ranked play unless you are the very cream of the crop you will generally be matched with people at your skill level. the only people who suffer are the really high end players on NA, because for some stupid reason NA pros wont plkay hero league because they gtebad games, so when they do play hero league they get bad games etc etc.

Not really. HOTS is more of a team game than either LOL or DOTA. With items and individual levels, it's FAR easier to carry a game. In HOTS, games are often decided at draft, by which team has the worst player, or by the team with the poorest communication. The ranked ladder in LOL and DOTA is also far better in that people get demoted once players achieve a higher rank. In this preseason, ranks are entirely meaningless. If you're not at rank 1, you're stuck with whatever the MM throws you. Often the disparity is HUGE, particularly at ranks 30-10. I played at rank 10 for quite some time and saw a large disparity in ability and game understanding. Blizzard knows this and Browder even comments on these issues often.

There are two problems with HotS matchmaking.

1) Your rank is cosmetic, it has little to do with how good are and nothing to do with how the system matches you. Blizzard wanted to adopt Hearthstone's ladder system aesthetically but didn't want to use it to actually matchmake games. So it's a clusterfuck.

2) They either won't or don't have the players to be able to match people in the same MMR bracket with each other. Instead they create teams with similar average MMR. Which is also a clusterfuck given how team-orientated the game is.

This isn't how matchmaking has worked for a couple of months now.

So I was going to vehemently disagree with you — but I've actually been playing nothing but QM games recently after I gave up on Ranked. Trying Ranked play again, and you're absolutely right. It's way better than it used to be.

"You finally did it, you magnificent bastards. You went so nerd that even I don't know WTF you're talking about anymore. I salute you." - WindupAtheist

It's better, but I wouldn't say WAY better. It really needs to be solo only. Too many people gaming the system by making duos with a rank 30 and a rank 5. They're also allowing people to rank absurdly high with little to no experience. I'm losing far too many games due to people not understanding how to prioritize objectives.

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

It's better, but I wouldn't say WAY better. It really needs to be solo only. Too many people gaming the system by making duos with a rank 30 and a rank 5. They're also allowing people to rank absurdly high with little to no experience. I'm losing far too many games due to people not understanding how to prioritize objectives.

Well, matchmaking has decided to start crippling me again with rank 30 players and above. So I take back what I said before, it's just as crap as QM.

"You finally did it, you magnificent bastards. You went so nerd that even I don't know WTF you're talking about anymore. I salute you." - WindupAtheist

In general I'm not a fan of huge sweeping changes on live games, but this one seems to be mostly centered around the loot/level system so far so maybe it won't mess everything up too badly. A few new unannounced heroes (plus the Diablo 2 Amazon) and a new battleground coming too.

The new loot system sounds like a rip of Overwatch, with players leveling up more frequently and getting random drops from a loot pool that's getting massively diluted with a titanic influx of garbage items that nobody wants (characters are getting sprays and taunts and crap like that). Kind of vague on if you'll still be able to buy stuff the old way, it sounds like skins are going to rotate in and out of the store or something like that.

After playing some post-2.0 launch, not having played since Beta/Launch, and watching a bunch of HGC (pro league) games I have to say that Dota 2 and LoL games are now quite boring to watch. There's so much dead time in those games compared to HotS games. I was watching the LoL Team SoloMid vs Flash Wolves Mid-Season Invitational match today and on top of it being a 53 minute match, which is like >3x the length of a normal HotS match, it felt like at least 1/3rd of the match was both teams just running around placing and removing wards.

League would be better if they adopted HotS's approach on a couple things.

- Get rid of "last hitting" for gold. Just give gold based on the amount of damage done to the mob.- Link everyone's XP in a team pool

I would come back for those changes. But for now? Nah.

What the others said, no. DOTA and LOL's problems are their own and far removed from the design direction of HOTS.

LoL's competitive problems mostly stem from it's meta issues (half of the champion roster can be garbage tier at any time), map design, FLASH, and Korean dominance. This season has been a bit more viewer friendly, but not much. FW/TSM game was a bad one to pick since you've got two conservative teams fighting to not get kicked out of the tournament.

The reason I've noticed that the Koreans are so good at LOL is that they don't fuck about with team fights early that they don't need. They get their farm early and they are precise about that shit. Both sides get their gold up and don't start fighting until they have a good item base unless it's punishing some dumbass that gets himself in a 1v4 situation. It's incredibly effective. It's also boring as shit to watch.